But seeing as I'm waiting for bleach to work it's magic in the bathroom, I'll use the time to answer seriously.
Yeah. I went out with this guy when I was 18/19, it was my first real proper relationship. Before then we'd been really close friends for a few months. We were at school together and did almost everything together - we'd eat lunch and supper together, we had the same free lessons, we'd hang out after school and at the weekends. It was brilliant.
I think it was all a bit much in the end. Too much too soon, sort of thing. When we left school it was awful, we spent the summer travelling to see each other and I used to cry my eyes out every time I left him. I don't think I've ever hurt as much as when I left for uni and sort of knew that it was the start of the end.
It ended really badly, we don't talk now. I still sometimes think about some of the times we had together and smile and that, but I've come to realise that although it was pretty much perfect in one environment, it just wasn't working in our new situation.
Being in love is something completely overwhelming. It might happen again, I guess.

just because it's the nearest you've come to feeling 'in love' it doesn't actually mean you were, does it? Most people have their first serious relationship when they're 18/19, most people don't actually count that as 'falling in love' however, as this thread of love-absent twentysomethings surely proves!

i have had other relationships since then and been with other people. one or two have been really incredibly nice people. but up until now i've never met, or been with, anyone who i've felt about the same way as i felt about him, anyone who i could see fitting the same part of my life that he did. you know that feeling when they arrive, and the whole world disappears? and when they leave again and you go home and weep and howl and feel as though you'll just never be able to do anything, as though there's nothing worth getting up for or leaving the house for, nothing could possibly be as good as a moment with them? when there's something more than them being your best friend, and the one that turns you on, and the one that always cheers you up and calms you down, when there's something so much deeper than that? and when they leave for the last time and your world breaks into a million tiny pieces and you've no idea why or how on earth you're still alive and in that much pain?
i've never had that with anyone else. yet. and i guess that, along with a million other feelings like it, is why i think i was in love with him.

before you truly go in the Cunts Column of my DiS spreadsheet.
GP- i had something similarly intense when I was 19. Was it love, or was it just protracted mutual infatuation? I honestly don't know, but I've realised over time that it doesn't matter and there's acually very little to be gained by labelling your feelings too much. You might not ever meet somebody who makes you feel like him ever again, but I'd bet anything you'll make somebody who makes you feel every bit as swept away, just in a different (and probably MILES BETTER) way. Anyway, enough of the big-sisterly advice, but yeah, listen to me! :)

you're beginning to sound like my mother.
Love is what it is to every individual individually. It's not a fucking series of tick boxes. If you don't agree with pony's idea of love then just move along, because you're not right just as much as you're not wrong.

Some people simply can't handle the high drama or pain that often goes along with a highly charged match- it would be more like hell to them rather than love. Conversely, some people equate that drama with love, which doesn't on its own feel like love *to me* at all- it sounds more like dependancy and low self-esteem, but that's not to say it's not love to them.
(for the record, I like highly-charged AND stable, which makes me a very fussy bugger indeed).

he's going around questioning whether people were *really* in love, when it's such a subjective experience that if you think you're in love, you probably bloody well are, even if it feels different to how Terry told you it does in woodwork that time.

but if a 14 year old boy who had just kissed a girl for the first time told you about how 'in love' he was, you wouldn't genuinely accept it, would you? It might be 'love' to him, because, as you say, you can't prove either way, but most likely, with absolutely no life experience, it isn't really true.
and anyway it's a pointless argument but i just love to wind people up, especially those who love to project an image of being 'so in touch' with their emotions.

the kind of love where there's DRAMA, and the kind that actually makes you happy and calm. I still get urges to have really intense flings with unsuitable men, but they are less frequent now, and I ignore them.

now I just listen to the blues like a grumpy old man...
I can remember the day after the split just sitting on a park bench and staring at the trees swaying in the wind feeling like the lonliest person on earth. Twas like having me heart pulled out of my arse! Think I'll give it a miss for another few years.

once properly, a few more times sort of. But only the one really counts. It was intense. Too intense, too long-distance, too too painful come the wrenching-apart. For us both, for we loved yet, yet could not love. Hence why I am careful, now, lest love be lightly tossed before flames youth dare not attempt to quench.

Awesome lass, though. Beautiful, intelligent as fuck, devoted. Cruel circumstance and callowness were our downfall. In the cold light of retrospect I realise she and I weren't entirely eye-to-eye, but sometimes I wonder...

it happened very quickly and its wonderful and im lucky cos he's not a dick and is my bestest friend and we have loads in common.
i dont understand couples who lead pretty much entirely sperate lives with all seperate interests.